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A toast rack or toastrack is a
serving piece Tableware is any dish or dishware used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. It includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes, and other items for practical as well as decorative purposes. The quality, nature, variety and number of ob ...
having vertical partitions (usually from five to eight in number) connected to a flat base, used for holding slices of
toast Toast most commonly refers to: * Toast (food), bread browned with dry heat * Toast (honor), a ritual in which a drink is taken Toast may also refer to: Places * Toast, North Carolina, a census-designated place in the United States Books * '' ...
. It often has a central ring handle for carrying and passing round the table. The term ''toast rack'' is also used in other fields, notably railways and architectural design, usually as a derivative term for objects resembling a toast rack (see below).


History

The earliest known examples of toast racks date from the 1770s. They have been made in large quantities since then and are still being made today.


Design

By maintaining air gaps between the slices, the toast rack allows water vapor to escape from hot toast instead of condensing into adjacent slices and making them soggy. However, this increased air flow can also mean that the toast becomes cold more quickly. The toast rack's design and shape follows prevailing fashion. The dividers were often made from silver wires and these in turn were
soldered Solder (; NA: ) is a fusible metal alloy used to create a permanent bond between metal workpieces. Solder is melted in order to wet the parts of the joint, where it adheres to and connects the pieces after cooling. Metals or alloys suitable ...
to either a wire-work or a solid base that sat on four feet. Sometimes the base is separate and was used to dispose of any crumbs that fell. Some ingenious designs were made including expanding or folding types (so as to take up less space). Others had incorporated egg-cups or receptacles for jam or
marmalade Marmalade is a fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits boiled with sugar and water. The well-known version is made from bitter orange. It is also made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins, sweet oranges, bergamo ...
. A designer renowned for his innovative take on the toast rack was
Christopher Dresser Christopher Dresser (4 July 1834 – 24 November 1904) was a British designer and design theorist, now widely known as one of the first and most important, independent designers. He was a pivotal figure in the Aesthetic Movement and a major cont ...
(1834–1904), who studied at the
Glasgow Government School of Design The Glasgow School of Art (GSA; gd, Sgoil-ealain Ghlaschu) is a higher education art school based in Glasgow, Scotland, offering undergraduate degrees, post-graduate awards (both taught and research-led), and PhDs in architecture, fine art, and ...
from the age of 13 and is widely thought of as the 'father of modern design'. Modern designs are often made from stamped and folded stainless steel sheet or from welded stainless wire.


Derivative names


Architecture

Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...
's Fallowfield Campus main building, the Hollings Building designed by architect L. C. Howitt, is often referred to as "The Toast Rack", due to its unusual architectural design. The appearance is compounded by the fact that the building was constructed to house a department of domestic science. A neighbouring building, by the same architect, is said to resemble a fried egg. The building was Grade II listed in 1998 and was described by the prolific architectural critic,
Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
as "a perfect piece of pop architecture". An affluent block of streets in
Wandsworth Wandsworth Town () is a district of south London, within the London Borough of Wandsworth southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan The London Plan is the statutory spatial development strategy for the Gre ...
, South West London (SW18), is commonly referred to as "The Toast Rack" by local estate agents and residents, owing to its appearance on street plans which seems to resemble the shape of a toast rack.


Railway and tramway carriages

The 'toast rack passenger carriage' has been a design feature of railways since their inception, with the name particularly common on miniature and light railways, where it refers to open-sided carriages (with or, especially on miniature railways, without roofs) where the essential design is a flat frame with a series of upright seats set at right-angles to the direction of the track, thus forming a crude representation of a toast rack. When the term 'toast rack carriage' is used of larger railways (up to, and sometimes including,
standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...
) it refers to coaches whose seats are set at right-angles to the track direction, and with no side corridor, central aisle, or corridor connection; thus each compartment is fully separated from the next by upright seats, again resembling the toast rack design. At these larger gauges the coaches may be fully enclosed, or 'semi-open' (with roofs and sides, but unglazed windows).A vintage (and now restored) example is illustrate
here
by the Welsh Highland Railway.
Many railways have examples of toast rack carriages, and some (for example the
Vale of Rheidol Railway The Vale of Rheidol Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Cwm Rheidol) is a narrow gauge heritage railway in Ceredigion, Wales, between Aberystwyth and Devil's Bridge; a journey of . It opened in 1902, and from the withdrawal of main line steam on Brit ...
in
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
) are known for a distinct preference for the design in their rolling stock fleet. On
tram A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...
ways of the horse and early electric age, toastrack cars – usually with roofs and often reversible seats – were common in warm climates or for summer use. On electric tramways, such cars were usually trailers, but motor toastracks did occur.


References

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External links


Christopher Dresser. Toast Rack. c. 1878.
Tableware Breads